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The prisons are full of people who have committed no crime, Alejandro Díaz Sántiz denounces

Tzotzil spends his 33rd birthday in jail, accused of
murder by the true perpetrator

Hermann BellinghausenLa
Jornada, Friday October 25, 2013

Alejandro Díaz
Sántiz, “unjustly imprisoned”, as he claims repeatedly,
reached the age of 33 years on Thursday. He has spent fifteen of them in prison.
A member of Solidarity with the Voice of el Amate, and adherent to the Sixth
Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle of the EZLN, he is currently “held prisoner”
in the State Centre for the Social Reintegration of the Convicted (CERSS) number
5 in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas.

“The rulers do not care about justice; they are only
worried about their own wellbeing, while the prisons are filling up with people
who have committed no crimes, violating families without reason or
motive.”

He
was sentenced to 30 years, accused of rape and murder by the true perpetrator of
the crime, which occurred in Veracruz at the end of the last century. In fact,
part of his struggle has been to get a transfer to a prison in his native
Chiapas. He is Tzotzil, originating from Chalchihuitán, and as a very young man
went to look for work outside the state. There he found betrayal and
disgrace.

“Today, I complete 33 years of the life that God has
given me; the saddest part is not being able to celebrate with my family,
instead of being happy and content I am just filled with anger at this unjust
imprisonment.” He has served half his sentence, and in spite of his
participation in the collective defence of the human rights of the prison
population and against unjustified sentences like his own, he stands out for
what in prison language is called “good conduct”.

Along with his compañero Alberto
Patishtán Gómez, he has participated in the protests, hunger strikes and actions
through which dozens of Zapatista prisoners and adherents to the Sixth have
achieved their release in recent years.

He
remembers that “during the second visit made by the Governor Manuel Velasco
Coello, here in the prison, on July 4th, he pledged to seek the means or
connections to the authorities in Veracruz to obtain my freedom, which so far
has not happened; so once again I demand my immediate release,” he
said.

Now that Patishtán’s well-known struggle for freedom has
entered a new “definitive” stage (there are already several), Alejandro Díaz has
allowed his case to be reported, along with those of two other
compañerosof the Sixth, ejidatarios of San
Sebastián Bachajón, who he has not yet met: Antonio Estrada Estrada, a prisoner
in the CERSS 17 in Playas de
Catazajá, and
Miguel Demeza Jiménez
in CERSS 14, El Amate, in Cintalapa de Figueroa. Both are imprisoned for crimes
for which they have been proved innocent, and both have been accused by the true
perpetrators.

This October 24th, he adds, “also marks 6 months since
they murdered our compañero Juan Vázquez Guzmán for defending the ejido of San
Sebastian Bachajón.” For that crime, the authorities have not yet presented any
results, far less have they identified anyone as responsible, even though the
main lines to follow are so obvious.

Finally, Alejandro Díaz
invites the people of Mexico “to join the call for
justice and freedom for the political prisoner Alberto Patishtán, for, as we
see, his right to justice has again been forgotten.”

English translation by the Chiapas
Support Committee for the: International Zapatista Translation Service, a
collaboration of the Chiapas Support Committee, California, Wellington Zapatista
Support Group, UK Zapatista Solidarity Network